Pace/MacGill Gallery presents a retrospective exhibition of photographs by Hiro. Featuring color fashion images from the 1960s and 70s, celebrity portraits, and personal work projects, Hiro celebrates the originality of vision, technical innovation, and precision of execution that mark the photographer’s distinguished and enduring career.
Born Yasuhiro Wakabayashi to Japanese parents in Shanghai in 1930, Hiro arrived in New York City in 1954, where he began his photographic training as an assistant to Richard Avedon. Through Avedon’s introduction, he started working under renowned art director Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s Bazaar in 1956. Hiro’s fashion and editorial career quickly flourished, and by 1963 he was the only photographer under contract with the magazine – a position he enjoyed for the next ten years. Now in his mid-80s and no longer under contract, Hiro continues to take assignments with the magazine that reinforce his status as a creative conceptualist and exquisite craftsman.
Infused with an elegant sense of Surrealism, Hiro’s images embrace the use of bold color, dynamic design, experimental lighting, and unconventional compositional juxtapositions to transport viewers to illusory realms where the boundaries between genres disappear. Whether photographing The Rolling Stones, Tokyo subway commuters, fighting fish, the 1969 Apollo 11 spaceship launch, or a baby’s foot, Hiro approaches his subjects with a distinctly metamorphic vision.
EXHIBITION
Hiro
From February 25 to April 16, 2016
Pace/MacGill Gallery
32 East 57th Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10022
United States
http://www.pacemacgill.com
